Are The Bone Fragments Amelia Earhart’s Or A Sea Turtle?

The three bone fragments showed up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several artifacts, some glass bottles, old makeup and shells that had been cut open.

Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to draw  DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could determine if Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.”There’s no guarantee,” said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.Since 1989, Gillespie’s group has made 10 trips to the island, trying to find clues that might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator. It could be months before scientists will actually know for sure  and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle.

The fragments were found near a hollowed out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.Earhart’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century’s most unsolved mysteries.